Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with Senator Ketter, the chair of this inquiry by the Economics Reference Committee, and commend him for the work that he's done—and, of course, I commend the work of the secretariat and my colleagues. This very important inquiry on non-conforming building products was instigated several years ago, at the end of 2015, and that involved my then colleague Senator John Madigan and Senator Lambie. The trigger for this inquiry was the Lacrosse building fire in Melbourne in November 2014. It was due to luck alone that no lives were lost in that fire. The committee quite rightly revisited the issue of cladding following the awful tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June this year. This inquiry is very timely and very urgent. I agree with everything Senator Ketter has said about the need for urgent action in relation to this.

It is up to the government, it is up to the minister and it is up to the states to take immediate action in relation to this. If the government won't act, the next step will be to have an amendment to the Customs Act in terms of safer building products so that, once and for all, we can ban polyethylene building products coming into this country. We don't need them. We can go without them. The cost differential between the two per square metre is minuscule. That is the evidence the inquiry has heard. It would ensure that these products are not used in high-rise buildings. At the moment, the flammable material can be used for shop fittings; it can be used on single-storey buildings. But why let them into the country in the first place? The cost involved would be negligible in terms of having a fire retardant, a material that is actually safe, so that you will not effectively have buildings wrapped in petrol.

On a recent episode of Four Corners, fire safety engineer Tony Enright stated:

A kilogram of polyethylene will release the same amount of energy as a kilogram of petrol, and it gets worse than that because polyethylene is denser than petrol too, so that's about, a kilogram of polyethylene is like about one and a bit, one and a half litres of petrol. … If you look at a one metre by one metre square section—

of PE core cladding—

that will have about three kilograms, the equivalent of about five litres of petrol.

People live in these buildings and sleep there overnight. So why would we have any of those buildings effectively wrapped in petrol? That is what we are talking about. There must be immediate action in relation to this.

That is why this inquiry has been so important. Everything that the chair has said is spot-on. We need to make sure that we have action by the states and the Commonwealth in relation to this as a matter of urgency. Unless the states act with alacrity, with a great sense of urgency, the way to stop this from occurring is to stop bringing this stuff into the country. But that still leaves thousands of buildings that have this cladding. There must be that audit. I am not satisfied that the audit has been as comprehensive as it could have been.

We asked questions of the South Australian government—I think they were questions by Senator Hume—about the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, the two magnificent buildings. We should have been told immediately what sort of cladding they had, because there is an audit that is occurring on that. I think the government has assured us there isn't a problem. But this is information a government should have at its fingertips with an audit. So ban the stuff from coming into the country from now on, and let's have a comprehensive audit so remediation can be carried out and people can live and work safely in these buildings.

This report is of utmost urgency. The committee has done its work—and I note that Senator Carr was a very active participant on this committee. We have done our work. We have issued the warnings. We have said there is no excuse not to act. Let us hope that governments federal, state and territory do not hesitate to act on the recommendations of this inquiry to do what is necessary to protect public safety. We cannot, under any circumstances, bear the tragedy that occurred in London just a few months ago. We must prevent any risk of that happening here. That is why this report is of utmost public importance and urgency and we must act on it.